A Beacon for Change: The Pittsburgh Courier Story

Groundbreaking, influential, transformative. From its beginnings in 1907, the Pittsburgh Courier has been a leader among the nation’s African American newspapers – sparking historic change on issues ranging from education, housing and employment to discrimination in the military. With rare archival images and compelling interviews, this documentary explores the Courier’s impact on civil rights, social justice, culture and sports. The paper also provided historians with an invaluable chronicle of everyday life in the black community.

A Beacon for Change: The Pittsburgh Courier Story aired on Feb 22, 2018.

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It started with a shipwreck in 1850. Two Irish sweethearts are headed to the New World when calamity strikes. The chaos of the shipwreck separated the couple. But many years later, WQED picks up the story in Pittsburgh where their implausible reunion is a love story for the ages. It’s just one of a collection of poignant, romantic and life-affirming stories set in Western Pennsylvania – all with an engaging musical thread.

From education to employment, health care to housing, transgender Americans fight daily for their right to exist. How is Pittsburgh responding? This documentary spotlights some of the concerned organizations working on behalf of the region’s transgender population – and also profiles transgender men and women as they define their own authentic lives while navigating an evolving city.

For many Western Pennsylvanians, a day of cookie baking is as celebratory as the holidays. Families gather in kitchens throughout the region to mix dough, whip frostings and scatter sprinkles. It’s a time to embrace ethnic traditions and remember loved ones who handed down now creased and crumbling recipes. This holiday documentary features a pizzelle-making church group, gingerbread house artists, one of the area’s busiest cookie bakeries, a woman who donates her cookies as a goodwill gesture, and Pittsburgh’s popular cookie tour.

Poverty is a multifaceted social problem that affects billions of people worldwide. Our focus is on the Pittsburgh region in this third Think! initiative. Working with the Art of Democracy and a diverse group of regional community partners directly involved in combating various elements of poverty, we have determined that our discussion of poverty must ask the following questions:

WQED has long reported on the Vietnam War – with a significant focus on veterans. But the perspective of the Vietnamese people is equally compelling - and all too often, unheard. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, many Vietnamese people made desperate scrambles to flee the country. Their exoduses were fraught with danger – some escaping in tiny boats or by airlift. Others fled under U.S. policies allowing the emigration of children fathered by American troops as well as people who fought against the Communists. And some of them found new lives in Western Pennsylvania.